15 replies
Hello Everybody,

I have a feeling that i might be scaring some clients, ( yeah.. i'm talking about the small ones...) so i decided to check out what you guys are doing...

If you're offering a $250/month service and charges a setup fee of $235...
Do you ask for $485 right away or do you take only $235 down and start the recurring $250 30 days after ??

Thanks !
#fees #setup
  • Profile picture of the author David Miller
    What is the service and what is the setup fee for? Is it really costing you 235.....is it worth waiving to keep a client at 250/month.

    It's really an impossible question to answer without knowing details and understanding what your costs and profit margin are. Most people look at setup fees as a charge to be waived in order to get their business....but with no details....there's no way to answer you.
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    The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.
    -- FRANK SINATRA, quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat
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  • Profile picture of the author ltplenus
    Well.. those exact numbers i've been using for sms and i've acquired clients by taking both setup + first month straight away but i would like to know how everybody is doing it in general regardless of the service...
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  • Profile picture of the author linebelowdigital
    I'd say remove the price barrier completely. This goes against a lot of advice that I hear from Guru's but why not just offer a free trial with a recurring autopayment after 30 days. Chargify works great for this.
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    Make An Easy $200 - $1500/mo Per Client Helping Local Businesses to Find Leads...

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  • Profile picture of the author Lmr1
    I provide SMS and do not do the free month....for a few reasons...I am including my consultation with the business owner. I am including signage, table tents and posters for the biz owner to promote their VIP TEXT CLUB....and that costs me money!
    I am creating their campaign for them and putting my time, money and effort into it. Nothing is free and if you go on making this free and that free and giving everything away it cheapens our services...
    I do not go into a bar or restaurant and expect anything free. Know that you offer value...Now what I do for them is maybe after a year give them a free month or give them a 200 gift card at renewal time to show my appreciation for their business.
    The serious businesses will have no problem writing you that check and to be quite frank I do not want to deal with people who want to pay me nothing, want it all for pennies....
    Collect your fee and first month upfront! What you do is worth it and the trend needs to be set so these biz owners know we are not playing around and we earn what they pay us.
    if you feel you are losing a sale....the best I would say is to take 10% off set up fee. But still walk out with first month and remaining amount. You are worth it!
    This is just my opinion, everyone has the right to their own. This is what works for me and it really in all honesty is not a lot of money to put out for them to see the ROI they are going to see...best of luck to you.
    ltplenus , PM me sometime and we can chat about SMS and what is working for each of us! Good luck!!!
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    • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
      mis read please delete
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      | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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      • Profile picture of the author ltplenus
        Thanks everybody, for all your comments.
        I think i'll stick to my current model (setup + first month)
        Lmr1, i'll send you a PM soon ;-)

        Thanks again
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  • Profile picture of the author kymobilemedia
    I have not ventured into getting sms clients yet, but I plan on doing so in the next week or so.

    I was planning on offering a 1 month free trial, and if it does not work, they have no obligation to continue the service.

    Then, if I work hard to get people on their sms list over that 1 month time, and send 1 or 2 sms blasts out and get people in their business, they are not going to stop doing it.

    Then have the owner track the sales that they get in that month to see how much revenue you brought in.

    Then you can determine your monthly fee.

    If you get the owner an extra $2000 that month, they shouldn't have any problem paying $500 per month for your service since that figure will grow even more over time.

    Just my thoughts, and I am still putting my sms plan together.

    Thanks
    Jason
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    • Profile picture of the author ltplenus
      I do offer some freebies when i feel that i need to, in order to get my foot in the door however, i dont see myself offering sms trials for restaurants. Some business owners simply dont make it happen. TAKING ACTION is not a general rule just for us "Marketers". I have provided one of my clients a gazillion ways to get opt-ins but he simply doesn't do what i told him to. His employees dont give a damn about telling customers about the VIP club, the delivery guys dont even mention it, his in store signage is crappy as crappy can get. I call him, visit the store, try to push him and everybody else but...the results are very weak. So, if it was a 15 days trial i can tell you one thing: I would have passed the 60 day mark without seeing a dime lol
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  • Profile picture of the author kymobilemedia
    Good point. What are some of the ways that you have seen to get the employees involved? Maybe get the owner offer some sort of incentive to his/her employees if they get a certain amount of opt-ins in a certain amount of time? Maybe have an employee contest to see who can get the most opt-ins (not sure how to track that one), etc?

    Thanks
    Jason
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  • Profile picture of the author ltplenus
    This is exactly what i wanted to do but as far as i can tell, it wont do the trick ( although it should). This specific pizza place has only 5-7 employees counting the drivers and the pizza maker, and all of them seem not to care at all about opportunities to grow,make more money or something like that. They are losers with a University Degree. Seriously! Its not my intention to judge or been rude though, unfortunately that is necessarily the case.
    Anyway, the bottom line is: most of us ( including myself ) would give an arm and a leg to get that first customer but i can tell you, as soon as you get your first one you get more confidence and as a consequence,you start thinking about qualifying your clients and charging higher fees...
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  • Profile picture of the author Lmr1
    A lot of valid points here....here are a few more ideas to pass along to your client to help them get the word out of their "vip mobile club", "text club", or " fan club"....whatever suits your fancy...

    Lets talk a pizza shop, any typical shop that we all know and love. Seats maybe 50-75 ish....

    Prior to even walking in the door, we can capture the customers attention by maybe placing window cling with all info in the window or on the door.
    Maybe they have a nice LED sign and you can promote all day and all night to get people to opt in...
    At the table, you can go with a catchy, bold table tent, on the placemat, have the servers mention if you opt in now you can receive 15% off tonite's bill....
    Have it printed on the receipts, place on website, FB page, posters placed tastefully and strategically....
    Everytime someone pays their bill, the person at the reg is responsible for mentioning the SMS campaign....there are many ways they should be carrying out what we advise them to do.
    If you consult and they do business with you and do not utilize the tools and advice given to them it is not on us. We have to follow up of course and help out and be there for them, but at the end of the day it sounds like there are going to just be a few here and there that do not meet us halfway and expect their databases to magically grow on their own...it takes time and effort. Once you get that list to 100 that is a great starting point....once it grows to 500 and then 1000....so on and so on...that is when the magic happens.
    Lists can grow quickly, or some slowly....it depends....
    I try and tell biz owners they need to help!!!
    Best of luck!!!!
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    • Profile picture of the author ltplenus
      As i said Lmr1, everything you've mentioned here and much more was offered to him. This guy took over a month to get his table tops from the printing shop. The window cling is still there ( not really sure if it was produced or not ). He said the drivers are always busy and don't have the time to mention it to customers.. COME ON!!!! Will 10 seconds per delivery screw up their day ?
      In order to get signups he agreed to offer a FREE large pizza every week, discount on customer's bill, and 30 days of free movie rentals (Sure i pushed a Netflix offer on him lol).
      Still, mediocre results.In the last 10 days or so he managed to get 3 optins a day ( better than nothing ) and prior to that he had 17 signups in a 2 months period. By the way, i haven't seen any new signup from the last 2 days...
      End of story, i can't see myself having him as a client for too long anymore. I like him personally, great guy but.. he's not aggressive in his business.I can't even come with a $250 dollar bill since he didn't even sent a message to his list yet...
      I'll have a meeting with him this week to see what i can get but i dont really believe its going to work...
      For otherwise, a guy who owns a restaurant ( not a pizza shop ) right across the street ( which is also a client of mine ) is good as good can be. He explodes his place every other day with events and a bunch of things. And we didnt even touched SMS yet....
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  • Profile picture of the author Lmr1
    Just know at the end of the day you did your job and your part.....this one is on the biz owner. This is something the biz owner has to promote as we know and maybe he just isn't the guy that is the agressive type we need on the inside to get job done...lol
    Best of luck with the other biz owner....
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Ben
    ltplenus, you are correct about not offering the service for free. In my market, there are a few people who are just going and signing up as many businesses as they can by offering them free SMS texting. This makes people feel good because they are signing up all these businesses, but very few actually sign on as actual paying clients.

    When you give something away for free it is hard to justify the value of it down the road. It also means the business owner doesn't spend as much time optimizing the service because they view it as just some freebie. Further, the SMS salesperson gets so caught up in giving away their service to new businesses that they aren't able to properly service the clients they already gave it to. It's just not a good way to go about things.

    As for the setup and monthly fee, it seems kind of expensive to get them into a $250/month plan right off the bat. I like to start off at a lower plan while the business is building their opt-in list and tier it up as they are sending out more texts. This has worked very well for me. Not all businesses tier up, but the ones who do end up paying me $449 a month.

    -Ben
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  • Profile picture of the author Lmr1
    Thanks Ben for the post, I agree completely.....your post is spot on with the value that is there and that it will be harder down the road to justify if you give it away from the gate! I agree 100%!
    Let's do it right from the beginning to set the bar. :-)
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